“If you choose to spread these tales, I cannot stay you,” I answered.

“Will you help me to my revenge upon the woman Christina?”

“What do you mean by revenge?”

“Death,” she cried fiercely.

“I would slay you with my own hand first,” I answered, the passion in me rushing to utterance.

She laughed again vindictively and hatefully.

“So it is true, then, she has bewitched you. I might have known it. I told you and warned you that she was a vampire using up men’s lives with the unpitying remorselessness of a wild beast. And you are her latest lover, I suppose!”

The slander suggested by her words maddened me.

“I can hear no more, Madam,” I said sternly.

She threw up her head with a gesture of pride.